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Career

Early years

His first TV breakthrough role came with a 1969 CBS-TV "Playhouse" special, "The Experiment"—and it was the only time he was billed as "M.K. Douglas." [12] Michael Douglas started his film career in the late 1960s and early 1970s, appearing in little known films such as Hail, Hero!, Adam at 6 A.M., and Summertree. His performance in Hail, Hero! earned him a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Male Newcomer.[13] His first significant role came in the TV seriesThe Streets of San Francisco from 1972 to 1976, in which he starred alongside Karl Malden. Douglas later said that Malden became a "mentor" and someone he "admired and loved deeply".[14] After Douglas left the show, he had a long association with his mentor until Malden's death on July 1, 2009. In 2004, Douglas presented Malden with the Monte Cristo Award of the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut for the Lifetime Achievement Award.

After leaving Streets of San Francisco in 1976, Douglas played a hospital doctor in the medical thriller Coma (1978), and in 1979 he played the role of a troubled marathon runner in Running. In 1979, he both produced and starred in The China Syndrome, a dramatic film co-starring Jane Fonda and Jack Lemmon about a nuclear power plant accident (the Three Mile Island accident took place 12 days after the film's release). The film was considered "one of the most intelligent Hollywood films of the 1970s."[10]

Success in Hollywood

Douglas's acting career was propelled to fame when he produced and starred in the 1984 romantic adventure comedy Romancing the Stone. It also reintroduced Douglas as a capable leading man and gave director Robert Zemeckis his first box-office success. The film also starred Danny DeVito, a friend of Douglas since they had shared an apartment in the 1960s.[17] It was followed a year later by a sequel, The Jewel of the Nile, which he also produced.

2001–present

Douglas in June 2004

Douglas starred in Don't Say a Word (2001), filmed shortly before his marriage to Zeta-Jones. In 2003, he starred in It Runs in the Family, which featured three generations of his family (his parents, Kirk and Diana, as well as his own son, Cameron). The film, although a labor of love, was not successful, critically or at the box office. He then starred in and produced the action-thriller The Sentinel in 2006.[22] During that time, he also guest-appeared on the episode, "Fatal Attraction", of the popular television sitcomWill and Grace, as a gay cop attracted to Will Truman (Eric McCormack); the performance earned Douglas an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Show.

On February 10, 2015, NBC News president Deborah Turness announced that anchor Brian Williams would be suspended from NBC Nightly News for six months without pay for having misrepresented an event that happened during the Iraq War in 2003. As a result, Douglas no longer announces the program's introduction. He was to resume announcing duties when Williams returns from his suspension in late 2015, but anchor Lester Holt was named permanent anchor of NBC Nightly News effective June 22 after Williams was reassigned to MSNBC.

Types of roles

According to film historian and critic David Thomson, Douglas was capable of playing characters who were "weak, culpable, morally indolent, compromised, and greedy for illicit sensation without losing that basic probity or potential for ethical character that we require of a hero."[29] Critic and author Rob Edelman points out similarities in many of Douglas's roles, writing that in some of his leading films, he personified the "contemporary, Caucasian middle-to-upper-class American male who finds himself the brunt of female anger because of real or imagined sexual slights."[10]

Conversely, Douglas also played powerful characters with dominating personalities equally well: as Gordon Gekko, in the Wall Street franchise, he acted the role of a "greedy yuppie personification of the Me generation," convinced that "greed is good;" in Romancing the Stone and The Jewel of the Nile, he played an idealistic soldier of fortune; in The Star Chamber (1983), he was a court judge fed up with an inadequate legal system, leading him to become involved with a vigilante group; and in Black Rain (1989), he proved he could also play a Stallone-like action hero as a New York City cop.[10]

Having become recognized as both a successful producer and actor, he describes himself as "an actor first and a producer second." He has explained why he enjoys both functions:

I love the fact that on one side, with acting, you can be a child—acting is wonderful for its innocence and the fun. . . On the other side, producing is fun for all the adult kinds of things you do. You deal in business, you deal with the creative forces. As an adult who continues to get older, you like the adult risks. It's flying without a net, taking chances and learning. I was never good in economics or business—had no business background, you know, and I like it.

He has also offered reasons why he has become successful in both acting and producing:

I think I'm a chameleon. I think it's something that I possibly inherited early on as a child going back and forth between two families. I know that whether it's right or wrong, I have an ability to sort of fit into a lot of different situations and make people feel relatively comfortable in a wide range without giving up all my moral values. I think that same chameleonlike quality can transfer into films. I think if you can remember the reason you got involved with it in the first place and try to keep that impulsive, instinctive feeling even when you're being beaten down or exhausted or waylaid, you'll be successful.[30]

In March 1977, Douglas, who was 32 years old at the time, married 19-year-old Diandra Luker, the daughter of an Austrian diplomat.[32][33] They had one son, Cameron, born in 1978. In 1995, Diandra filed for divorce and was awarded $45 million as part of the divorce settlement.[33][34]

Dating since March 1999, Douglas married Welsh actress Catherine Zeta-Jones on November 18, 2000. They were both born on September 25, though 25 years apart. Zeta-Jones says that when they met in Deauville, France, Douglas said, "I want to father your children."[35] They have two children, son Dylan Michael (born August 8, 2000)[36] and daughter Carys Zeta (born April 20, 2003).[37] In August 2013, People claimed that Douglas and Zeta-Jones began living separately in May 2013, but had not taken any legal action towards separation or divorce.[38] A representative for Zeta-Jones subsequently confirmed that they "are taking some time apart to evaluate and work on their marriage."[39] It was reported on November 1 that the couple had reconciled and Catherine moved back into their New York apartment.[40]

Douglas was selected as the recipient of the 2015 Genesis Prize, a $1 million prize, awarded by the Genesis Prize Foundation. Douglas plans to donate the prize money to activities designed to raise awareness about inclusion and diversity in Jewish life, and to finding innovative solutions to pressing global and community problems.[45] Douglas is a U.S. citizen by birth in the United States and has Bermudian Status[46] through his mother's birth in Bermuda.

In the media

In 1980, Douglas was involved in a serious skiing accident which sidelined his acting career for three years. On September 17, 1992, the same year Basic Instinct came out, he began a 30-day treatment for alcoholism and drug addiction at Sierra Tucson Center.[47][48]

In 1997, New York caddie James Parker sued Douglas for $25 million.[49] Parker accused Douglas of hitting him in the groin with an errant golf ball, causing Parker great distress. The case was later settled out of court.[50]

In 2004, Douglas and Zeta-Jones took legal action against stalker Dawnette Knight, who was accused of sending violent letters to the couple that contained graphic threats on Zeta-Jones's life. Testifying, Zeta-Jones said the threats left her so shaken she feared a nervous breakdown.[51] Knight claimed she had been in love with Douglas and admitted to the offenses, which took place between October 2003 and May 2004. She was sentenced to three years in prison.

Douglas attributed the cancer to a combination of stress, his previous alcohol abuse, and years of heavy smoking.[57] In July 2011, Star magazine published photographs which appeared to show Douglas smoking a cigarette while on holiday that month.[58] A representative declined to comment on the photographs.[59]

In November 2010, Douglas's doctors put him on a special weight-gain diet due to excessive weight loss that had left him weak.[60] On January 11, 2011, he said in an interview that the tumor was gone, though the illness and aggressive treatment had caused him to lose thirty-two pounds.[61] He noted that he would require monthly screenings because of a high chance of recurrence within two to three years.[62] In June 2013, Douglas told The Guardian that his type of cancer is caused by HPV, transmitted by cunnilingus,[4] leading some media to report this as well. His spokesman denied these reports and portrayed Douglas's conversation with The Guardian as general and not referring specifically to his own diagnosis.[63] Although Douglas described the cancer as throat cancer, it was publicly speculated that he may actually have been diagnosed with oropharyngeal cancer.[64][65] In October 2013, Douglas said he had suffered from tongue cancer, not throat cancer. He announced it as throat cancer upon the advice of his physician, who felt it would be unwise to reveal that he had tongue cancer given its negative prognosis and potential for disfigurement, particularly because the announcement came immediately before Douglas's promotional tour for Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.[52]

In 2006, he was a featured speaker in a public service campaign sponsored by a UN conference to focus attention on trade of illicit arms, especially of small arms and light weapons. Douglas made several appearances and offered his opinions:

The conference is an opportunity for UN member states to build on the Program of Action and to encourage countries to strengthen their laws on the illicit trade, … an issue that affects us all … [and] while owning guns is a legal right in most countries, the illegal trade in guns continues to fuel conflict, crime and violence.[70]

A few years earlier, in 2003, Douglas hosted a "powerful film" on child soldiers and the impact of combat on children in countries such as Sierra Leone. During the documentary film, Douglas interviewed children, and estimated that they were among 300,000 other children worldwide who have been conscripted or kidnapped and forced to fight. Of one such child he interviewed, Douglas stated, "After being kidnapped by a rebel group, he was tortured, drugged, and forced to commit atrocities."[70] Douglas discussed his role as a Messenger Peace for the UN:

I'm in an enviable position … When I talk about movies I can talk about messages of peace, and infuse them into the entertainment pages.[70]

In June 2015, during a visit in Israel to receive the Genesis Prize, Douglas said the boycott movement against that country is an "ugly cancer."[76]

Humanitarian initiatives

In 2009 Douglas joined the project Soldiers of Peace, a movie against all wars and for global peace.[77][78]

Douglas lent his support for the campaign to release Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the Iranian woman, who after having been convicted of committing adultery, was given a sentence of death by stoning.[79]